Avaliação de cardápios de restaurantes institucionais na perspectiva da biodiversidade dos alimentos

Abstract

Food socio biodiversity is one of the pillars of collective food sustainability. Healthy sustainable nourishment involves the production of food that protects biodiversity and promotes a varied diet, based on regional cultural habits and dishes. This exploratory study aimed to analyze biodiverse foods in Rio Grande do Norte state (RN) of Brazil on 120 institutional restaurant menus selected by non-probability convenience sampling. The monthly menus of 2019 were analyzed. The list of regional biosocial-diverse foods was obtained from Law no. 10/2021 by environmental ministery. All the restaurants studied offered biodiverse foods on their menus, particularly fruits. Caja and cashew fruit pulp, manioc flour, cilantro and gherkin were the most frequently listed foods on the menus. Native vegetables were absent in one restaurant and tubers, roots and cereals in two others. The restaurants served a low variety of socio-biodiverse foods, with only herbs and seasonings used in 80% of the restaurants. The data reveal how little our food biodiversity is explored, and the lack of incentives for restaurants to serve native dishes, which could contribute to guaranteeing nutrition security and developing healthy sustainable eating habits. This paper also does a discussion about food biodiversity since menu planning